OHSU StudentSpeak » Vanessa Lee, MD/MPH candidatehttp://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak
Who better than the students to describe what being a student at OHSU is all about?Tue, 15 Nov 2016 17:43:47 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.10Think globally, act locallyhttp://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/10/12/think-globally-act-locally/
http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/10/12/think-globally-act-locally/#commentsWed, 12 Oct 2011 19:28:54 +0000http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/?p=1968Read More]]>I was lucky to have the opportunity to travel and work on a global health project in Ethiopia this summer, but now that getting back to medical school means no more time to work internationally, I want to stay connected with the issues I encountered abroad and keep thinking about how students and universities can engage in global health.

On Thursday, October 13th, the OHSU Global Health Center is hosting a Global Health Fair in the Old Library Auditorium. Fourteen local NGOs will be presenting their work from 3 to 4:30pm, and there will be opportunities to mingle and network from 4:30 to 5:30pm. The health fair is free and open to the public. I’m excited to hear updates from big players in international relief like MSF/Doctors Without Borders and Mercy Corps, but I’m particularly looking forward to the opportunity to meet people involved with small, grassroots organizations that are committed to improving wellness across the globe.

Academic institutions, with their wealth of resources and human capital, are uniquely equipped to partner with these organizations. No matter the nature of your affiliation with OHSU, I encourage you to stop by, say hello, learn some new things, and get inspired to act.

]]>http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/10/12/think-globally-act-locally/feed/1Ethiopia photo journalhttp://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/10/ethiopia-photo-journal/
http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/10/ethiopia-photo-journal/#commentsWed, 10 Aug 2011 21:18:17 +0000http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/?p=1310Read More]]>Here are a few snapshots of my life in Gimbie. A foreigner toting around a camera creates quite the spectacle in town, but I wanted to try and capture a bit of my day-to-day experience: the people and places I saw on my daily walk through town, the types of clinics I visited for my research project, and the verdant countryside that nestles Gimbie between steep hills and valleys. I think that sometimes developing countries, especially poor African countries like Ethiopia, are portrayed in the popular media as miserable and unwelcoming places; my hope is that photos and stories like these can counter those stereotypes and show that, despite the challenges of poverty, Ethiopia is a beautiful and engaging place with lots of potential for development.

A woman selling her wares—in this case, the hot red peppers commonly used to season food—on market day in Gimbie.

Outside GAH’s outer clinic in Nekemte, a city that’s about a 1.5-hour drive east of Gimbie. The white shawls are typical of Ethiopian Orthodox women, who wear them when they go to worship.

A view from the hospital compound. The west is home to some of the most fertile land in Ethiopia; coffee is the biggest commercial crop, but subsistence farmers grow a variety of foods including corn, beans, and tef (the grain used to make injera, the spongy pancake-like staple of the Ethiopian diet).

One of GAH’s outer clinics.

A government health center in Nejo, about two hours from Gimbie. Maternal and child health services, as well as family planning, are free at these centers.

A government health post, the most rudimentary primary health care center in the Ethiopian system.

The countryside is beautiful, but the families who live out here have much poorer access to health care and often cannot reach the main road if they’re ill or afford transport to a health center.

]]>http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/10/ethiopia-photo-journal/feed/8Report from Ethiopia: Expect the unexpectedhttp://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/04/report-from-ethiopia-expect-the-unexpected/
http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/04/report-from-ethiopia-expect-the-unexpected/#commentsThu, 04 Aug 2011 16:09:53 +0000http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/?p=1288Read More]]>My charge this summer was to learn about local health care capacity with regard to pregnancy and delivery—pretty broad goals, but Dr. Nardos and I decided to try to administer two surveys: one for formal health care providers working at clinics, and one for midwives and other lay providers I happen to meet in the community. The surveys basically ask what these people do on a regular basis, how they handle certain prenatal and obstetric complications, the nature of their training, and what they perceive as successes, challenges, and needs in the realm of maternal health.

One of the most important lessons from my undergraduate studies in medical anthropology and global health is, forgive the cliché, to expect the unexpected. This type of research is clearly nothing like the sterile, controllable bench research I’m familiar with, and especially in developing countries one has to make allowances for language, culture, safety, geography, and general disorganization.

I was lucky to find a good translator within the first week of my stay, so my main challenge was undoubtedly logistics. I was unable to find any sort of detailed map, and the bus situation is far from reliable, so I spent a good deal of time wandering around and hoping I didn’t get stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhere (which, thankfully, never happened—we ended up being pretty good at hailing buses and hitching rides). Additionally, finding lay-level providers and traditional birth attendants proved to be harder than I thought: perhaps I didn’t get far enough into the countryside and away from formalized health care, perhaps home births are falling out of favor as the Ministry of Health invests more in maternal health outreach, perhaps I just didn’t ask the right people in the communities I visited, I’ll never know. Despite these hiccups, I think was able to visit enough health centers and speak with enough stakeholders to get a gestalt of how health care is organized and what gaps need to be filled to improve women’s access to quality obstetric care. I was touched by women’s stories, inspired by some of the providers I met, and I know I learned so much these past five weeks.

Hopefully the information I gathered this summer will lead to OHSU’s developing a future program with Gimbie Adventist Hospital to improve maternal health, and hopefully we’ll be able to give back to these people who taught me so much these past five weeks.

]]>http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/04/report-from-ethiopia-expect-the-unexpected/feed/1“Fayaada” from Ethiopia!http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/01/fayaada-from-ethiopia/
http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/2011/08/01/fayaada-from-ethiopia/#commentsMon, 01 Aug 2011 16:15:26 +0000http://www.ohsu.edu/blogs/studentspeak/?p=1247Read More]]>Fayaada! (that’s the beginning of a greeting in Oromifa, and one of the most useful words I’ve picked up) I’m sad to say that sending updates from the past few weeks was a bit futile, because Gimbie was without internet for the vast majority of my stay there. In a way it was nice—I’ve read more novels in five weeks than I had my entire first year of medical school—but it’s nice to be back in Addis Ababa and a little more connected to the world again! It’s unfortunate that my posts will be retrospective, but I still hope I can share a bit of the amazing experience I’ve had learning about women’s health care in Ethiopia.

Gimbie Adventist Hospital (GAH), my home away from home this summer, is a 70-bed private hospital serving the town of Gimbie and the surrounding rural communities in the West Wollega Zone of the nation. There’s a male ward, a female ward, the OR, and some outpatient rooms—it’s small, but it covers the basics and is the most sophisticated health care facility for a very large area. GAH also operates six outer clinics, a nursing school, and a new midwifery school as well. I stayed on the hospital grounds in the “volunteer dorm” with a few medical students from the UK who were completing their final year clinical electives, and the accommodations were quite nice; electricity, running water, and hot showers are quite a luxury in Gimbie!

The town of Gimbie itself is arranged around one paved road filled with minibuses, goats, cows, donkeys, little shops and stalls, children yelling “faranji!” (“foreigner!”) as you walk by, and hoards of people just sauntering up and down. There is a wonderful cook, Bejidu, who provides for us at our house, but if one feels so inclined you can wander into town for a juice (available flavors are papaya, mango, and avocado, which is surprisingly good with lime), a soda, or a little cup of the very strong and ubiquitous coffee. The ebb and flow of the town coincides with the daylight hours, so people are up early (all the better to gawk at and mock me as I attempted to run in the morning) and there’s not too much in the way of nightlife, but I think Gimbie is quite charming. People here are outwardly friendly, the surrounding countryside is stunningly beautiful, and there’s enough to keep oneself challenged and entertained.

I’ll write next about my endeavors doing research, but having just left Gimbie, I already miss it and wanted to give a brief snapshot of daily life. Gimbie Adventist Hospital is one of the biggest assets in the community, and I’m happy OHSU is invested in working with the hospital and creating positive change for all the great people I’ve met this summer.

I’m flying out in about 14 hours to New York, then Istanbul, then Addis Ababa to do research on maternal health in Ethiopia this summer. The last four weeks of medical school were quite a grind and I’ve barely recovered from our final exam, so it certainly hasn’t hit me yet that I’ll be spending the next few weeks on my own in a completely new culture. I’ve been looking forward to this project for months now, and I can’t believe it’s finally here.

OHSU has established a partnership with Gimbie Adventist Hospital in Gimbie, Ethiopia, and is working to improve maternal health outcomes in a country where a woman has a 1 in 27 chance of dying in childbirth (for the record, that statistic is roughly 1 in 8,000 in the developing world–maternal morbidity and mortality is one of the starkest and most persistent health disparities we face). The collaboration is still young, but so far OHSU staff from several disciplines have trained Ethiopian providers to perform pelvic prolapse surgeries and helped outline a curriculum for midwifery training. This will grow into a sustainable, collaborative initiative and will hopefully be a model (the first model, really) for OHSU’s long-term investment in global health.

Last year, two medical students traveled to Gimbie and did a community-based research project surveying rural women on their reproductive and maternal health care practices, attitudes, and needs. I’m planning to build on that baseline data and conduct needs assessment research with various health care providers (nurses, community health workers, traditional birth attendants, etc.) on maternal health care delivery. Since this partnership with Gimbie is still new, we basically just want to survey local capacity: who is providing care in the formal sector and in the community? what is the interplay between government, private ventures, and NGOs doing women’s health work here? how are women organizing around maternal health? what is providers’ training like? what are the standard protocols and health care system structures? what do providers identify as areas for improvement? Hopefully this big-picture data will allow us to see exactly where we can target future initiatives and help build local health systems to improve the quality of care and meet women’s needs.

To learn more about OHSU’s partnership with Gimbie, click here. The stakeholders I’ve met both in Portland and in Gimbie are really dedicated to this collaboration, and I’m happy to be involved in a project that will lay the groundwork for long-term efforts to promote health equity. I hope you stay tuned for my musings on global health and updates from the field!